Ex-Detective Offers Plea in Bank Robberies

By ROBERT HANLEY,

Published: May 7, 1992

NEWARK, May 6—
A former police detective has worked out a plea bargain in a string of eight bank robberies that his lawyer says he committed because he was mentally ill.

But the agreement, in a bizarre case of a model cop turned robber, says nothing about the whereabouts of $363,000 of the $593,000 he admitted stealing from August 1989 to October 1991.

A hearing in Federal District Court today yielded no reasons for why the detective, Allen R. Schott, a 17-year veteran of the Howell Township Police Department, robbed the banks in central and southern New Jersey, or what he did with the money.

Mr. Schott's lawyer, Jeffrey A. Bronster, said after the hearing that his client, a 38-year-old father of two school-aged daughters, was mentally ill and had submitted his resignation to superiors in Howell. But Mr. Bronster had nothing to say, in or out of court, about the missing funds. 'Arranging to Repay'

"Any of the money he still has control over we're arranging to repay," he said of his client, who pleaded guilty to the robberies. "It would not be appropriate for me to discuss where the rest of the money is, but it is no longer in his possession."

Mr. Schott, described by friends as a workaholic who moonlighted as a plumber and dabbled in real estate, made his admissions under a plea-bargaining arrangement with the United States Attorney for New Jersey, Michael Chertoff.

Mr. Chertoff offered little more than Mr. Bronster did on how Mr. Schott had spent the money. "There's no public explanation," Mr. Chertoff said after the court session. "Maybe at sentencing his explanation will emerge. We have not surrendered the right to get the money back."

Judge Nicholas H. Politan, who presided at the hearing, did not set a sentencing date. He gave Mr. Bronster until May 30 to submit a report from a psychiatrist who has had several meetings with Mr. Schott since he was arrested last Oct. 23, several minutes after fleeing with $92,689 from the Midlantic National Bank in Wildwood Crest in Cape May County.

The money was found in a gym bag in the trunk of Mr. Schott's car, along with a false mustache, black wig, sunglasses and baseball cap Mr. Schott wore during the robbery.

Under the plea bargain, Mr. Schott is required to return $28,000 he had placed with a business partner and surrender $14,000 in one bank account and $21,000 in another, Ricco C. Cipparone, an assistant United States Attorney, said. In addition, Mr. Schott is required to sell a farm valued at $50,000 in Bucks County, Pa., and to try to retrieve a $24,000 down payment he made shortly before his arrest in October on a parcel of land on an island off the coast of Virginia.

Mr. Schott's arrest doomed that deal, and Mr. Chertoff said it was problematic whether the authorities could obtain the $24,000 down payment from the real-estate agent in the transaction. He said there was no Federal law permitting his office to seize the $24,000 from the agent even if Mr. Schott had stolen it.

The agreement did not discuss the $300,000 Colonial home where Mr. Schott and his wife, LuAnn, lived in Wall Township, next to Howell. Friends have said the former detective and friends in the Police Department built the home in the mid-1980's and later added a swimming pool and a horse barn. Mr. Bronster, the defense lawyer, said the home was Mrs. Schott's residence, and, as such, not subject to surrender.

Mr. Chertoff said that if the judge orders Mr. Schott to pay restitution, all his assets could become subject to lien or attached to satisfy a court edict to reimburse the banks. But he said Mrs. Schott legally cannot be required to surrender her property rights because her husband committed a crime.

Mr. Chertoff scoffed at a suggestion that the plea agreement was lenient. "Eighteen years in prison is not that lenient a sentence," he said.

At the hearing, Mr. Bronster said he would appeal for leniency in sentencing because of Mr. Schott's mental illness. Asked outside of court about this, Mr. Bronster said: "The doctor has advised me he suffers from a psychosis, and the psychosis was directly responsible for what he did." He declined to elaborate.